Tony and his staff do a great job in getting interesting and informative speakers to their events. I found some of the information presented on Saturday so beneficial to my writing life I thought I’d share a little bit here.

One was a mention of a blogger I recently started following (at the suggestion of Marketing the Muse’s Marla Miller) Seth Godin. I have been marveling at how much meaningful information Seth can impart with just a few lines of short sentences, short paragraphs, and a lot of white space on the page.

And Elaine Wilkes, Ph.D. who spoke about ways to place our books everywhere and how to write emails and books that get results said this is the kind of writing that is selling best right now:

Short – even one-line – paragraphs.

Two or three word sentences.

Not every sentence needs a subject and verb.

Another thing she stressed: Our books are judged by our:

Cover

Title

Subtitle that states the book’s benefit

Guess why? Buyers looking for books to place in their stores don’t have time to read book synopses.

Please see the right side bar for a link to Elaine's course on how to get your book into stores or click here.

Okay you be the judge: does my cover, title, and subtitle pass her test?

That’s it for today. I’ll get into more of what I learned last Saturday in the next few days.

2 comments:

Sounds like a great conference. Was it mostly about e-books? Or digital publishing. I love Marla Miller and she kindly printed one of my article, "What are you doing to build your author platform?" plus she is one of the sponsors offering a free query critique on my blog to the "My Gutsy Story" contest. You may want to submit your story, like Dodie Cross did.

Thanks for coming by Sonia. Marla has been very generous with me as well. She featured one of my blog posts and I now have a video up on her Women Over 45 Speak site - check it out. I will definitely submit to the My Gutsy Story contest.

National Association of Memoir Writers

About Me

Madeline SharplesI’ve worked most of my professional life as a technical writer, grant writer, and proposal process manager and began writing poetry, essays, and creative non-fiction when my oldest son, Paul, was diagnosed as manic depressive. I continued writing as a way to heal since his death by suicide in 1999. My memoir, "Leaving the Hall Light On," first released on Mother's Day 2011 in hard cover, is about living with my son's bipolar disorder and surviving his suicide. My publisher, Dream of Things, is launching a paperback edition in July 2012 and an eBook in August 2012. I also co-edited Volumes 1 and 2 of "The Great American Poetry Show," a poetry anthology, and wrote the poems for two books of photography, "The Emerging Goddess" and "Intimacy." Besides having many poems published in print and online magazines, I write regularly for several websites: Naturally Savvy, PsychAlive, Open to Hope,and Journeys Through Grief and occasionally for The Huffington Post. I maintain two blogs: Choices and at Red Room.